The new features of Dell Latitude E6400 XFR 14” turn the new model into a compact case totally dust protected and weatherproofed presenting covering for all external ports, with rubber bumpers and a built-in handle for transporting it. Its redesigned chassis, a huge shell of thick plastic and alloy bolted around, makes the new model to look totally different form the business line of Dell’s notebooks. The build quality reveals tough body panels with super strong screen hinges and at the corners we find rubber to absorb energy from being dropped. Dell Latitude E6400 XFR has been tested to the extreme temperature presenting a resistance up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit and -20F for the lowest temperature conditions. For operating outdoors, the WXGA panel presents itself as a sunlight-readable one with optional-touch sensitivity and a matte finish style of the screen; the viewing angles are above average with a broad vertical viewing spot before colors start shifting. The speaker’s performance is average, as the bass and the midrange support are lacking and the overall volume is quite good for a small room.<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
The keyboard presents itself in the same rugged note but has the look and the feel of a standard keyboard that belongs to the other notebooks of the series. It has also backlight under the keys having settings only for off, on and automatic. The touchpad is weather sealed (dustproofed and waterproffed) with touchpad buttons covered in rubber cladding, but this doesn’t prevent them from fully ranged of movements.
As to the ports we find three USB, one eSATA/USB combo, LAN, DisplayPort, FireWire, VGA, audio jacks, and PCMCIA slot, including a front-mounted SD-card slot. Dell is packed with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz P9600 Processor (1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache) and NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M (256MB dedicated plus shared memory) graphics. This enables you to run more applications wherever you are and because of the 128GB SSD you can do it at a considerable speed. At the low voltage processors and integrated graphics, heat and noise don’t have to be much of a concern for Dell E6400 XFR. The notebook presents a heatsink and fan underneath wrapped in a chamber that is sealed. The battery system includes 6-cell (56Wh) Lithium Ion battery and at a 40% screen brightness with wireless active, the power lasted 3 hrs and 44 minutes, but with Dell XFR’s higher-end hardware it surely demands a higher power.
Dell Latitude E6400 XFR presents the following feature: its OS is Windows Vista Business (64-bit), a capacity of 4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM to a maximum of 8GB, a 8x DVD drive, a Dell Wireless WIFI 1510 (802.11a/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 capability and it is charging with a 90W 100-240V AC adapter. As a closing conclusion, Dell Latitude E6400 XFR proves to be a tough built notebook, even if it has plastic cladding for most of the external panels, its performance is above other rough notebooks, but lack the long duration of the battery which is limited at only 4 hrs, compared to others’ 9 hrs duration, but this happens because of its faster and efficient processor.
